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vladgasan
Dropbox Product Manager
Dropbox Product ManagerCut the Clutter: Ignore Files Feature is now live
Update: This feature is now live and available to all individual plan customers! Thank you to all our testers, and share your feedback with the team, we're still eager to hear from you!
For years you’ve asked for a simple way to exclude files and folders from sync without using selective sync feature. We’re testing a new way to give you more control over what Dropbox syncs and what it doesn’t. If you’ve ever wanted to keep certain files or folders on your device without syncing them to dropbox.com, this feature is for you.
🤔 What is it?
Ignore Files lets you list exclusion rules in a special text file called rules.dropboxignore placed in your Dropbox root folder. Any file or folder that matches a rule will stay on your computer but will not sync to dropbox.com or count against your storage
👀 Who we’re looking for
- Desktop Dropbox users on Windows, macOS, or Linux
- People who regularly deal with temporary or bulky content, e.g.
- Software Engineers
- Video / audio / 3D creators
- Anyone who hates seeing clutter in their cloud storage
- Someone who is comfortable trying a closed beta feature and sharing honest feedback
🗓️ How the closed beta works
Here’s what to expect if you join the beta for Ignore Files:
- Register - Fill out the form here → [Sign-up link]
- Confirm: Eligible participants will receive an email to confirm their participation, along with the timeline details.
- Get Set Up - Make sure you have Dropbox app installed on your computer
- We’ll Enable It - We’ll activate Ignore Files feature for you.
- Try It Out - Use Dropbox as usual for 1 week, ignoring files and folders as needed.
- Share Your Thoughts - At the end of the week, we’ll send a quick survey. You can also opt into a 30-minute feedback chat (optional, limited spots available!)
✍️ Want in?
- Fill out the quick screener here by date → [Sign-up link]
- Keep an eye on your inbox - we’ll be in touch if you’re selected
Thanks so much for helping us improve Dropbox. We’re excited to hear what you think!
Got questions? Just drop them in the thread below. 💬
50 Replies
I just wanted to add, I have set this up and I basically copied my .gitignore and put it into the rules.dropbox file at the top and level and it seems to be doing the job.
vladgasan - is that the expected pattern? As in .gitignore type matching.
There is also a work done in this direction:
https://github.com/sp1thas/dropboxignoreI understand that there is one single file in the root folder (rules.dropboxignore) that defines all the rules.
Git and Docker had another approach (one or multiple .gitignore and .dockerignore files), and I think that could have benefits. It may be more complex to manage, but having .dropboxignore files could define different rules on different folders. Would that be much more complex to develop?
Both .gitignore and .dockerignore use the same "language". Will rules.dropboxignore follow the same logic, or will use it's own rule language?
Im wondering, if a ignore generator can be built like https://www.toptal.com/developers/gitignore/
The idea being that, users can automatically generate a rules-ignore file based on development tools/languages - so the most common, along with files dropbox things should/could be ignore i.e .DS_Store etc...
Maybe the community can even help provide a list of ignore etc... this is being at top level would ensure you dont sync any of these files etc..
vladgasanHi huhlig
The issue is with the leading slashes used in your paths. Our engineers landed a fix that supports leading slashes. It could take a few days for your Dropbox build to update and after that the existing path ignores should work.
If you don't want to wait, go ahead and remove leading slashes from your paths:
/Projects/**/Cargo.lock -> Projects/**/Cargo.lock
/<folders>/<files> -> <folders>/<files>
and so on
After that save the rule file and remove files that match the rule or wait for them to be recreated when your IDE performs a build. The rules should start working again after that!
Keep in mind that if files have synced to dropbox.com already you'll need to remove them manually from there since we currently don't have support for cleanup of files, that were uploaded to dropbox.com.
Let me know if this works or if you have any other questions!- Dell_Dropbox
Community Manager
Pinging vladgasan for this one, maybe we can get a little help
Dell_Dropbox So I enabled the early access feature, went to sync options, and clicked Modify the rules, which created the rules.dropboxignore file. I did this on both machines and added two rules as a test: one for a file and one for a folder. Both are regularly deleted and recreated whenever the IDE performs a complete build.
/Projects/**/Cargo.lock
/Projects/**/target/
I have a directory structure that looks something like this:
/<folders>/<files>
/Projects/<projectname>/src/*
/Projects/<projectname>/target/*
/Projects/<projectname>/Cargo.lock
/Projects/<projectname>/Cargo.toml
/Projects/<projectname>/<other files>
/Projects/<groupname>/<projectname>/src/*
/Projects/<groupname>/<projectname>/target/*
/Projects/<groupname>/<projectname>/Cargo.lock
/Projects/<groupname>/<projectname>/Cargo.toml
/Projects/<groupname>/<projectname>/<other files>Based on the rules above, I would assume the following would be ignored; however, they appear to be still synced every time I build, which creates 10s of thousands of files.
/Projects/<projectname>/target/*
/Projects/<projectname>/Cargo.lock
/Projects/<groupname>/<projectname>/target/*
/Projects/<groupname>/<projectname>/Cargo.lock- Dell_Dropbox
huhlig This feature should now be available to all users who have the beta version of Dropbox installed. Also, please ensure you also have Early Access enabled, this is required to access the Ignore FIles feature.
- Go to your Dropbox account settings.
- Scroll to the Preferences section.
- Toggle Early Access to On
Dell_Dropbox Any idea when this will be available to a broader audience? I'm hesitant to write a watchdog utility to automatically ignore everything in my .gitignore files if this is slated for short release but this has been a frustrating limitation of dropbox for the better part of a decade.
Thanks — I can’t wait to ues this feature
